‘The Germans seemed to think the Rhine garrisons have been bolstered,’ I offered.
‘Probably the lower Rhine legions moved up. No good to us unless they cross the fucking river though.’
‘They’d have done that already if that was the plan, wouldn’t they?’ I asked glumly.
He nodded slowly. ‘Winter’s coming, and you don’t fight a war in German winter.’
‘You’re going to get skinny,’ I teased, trying to lighten the mood.
Titus grinned. ‘You’re the legion toothpick. I’ll be fine. Our lot will be fine. Don’t worry about winter, Felix. I’ve got us sorted out.’
‘How?’ I asked.
‘I’ll show you.’
33
Titus pushed open the door to the rear of the quartermaster’s building. Instantly I was assaulted by the heat of bodies crammed into a tight space, and the opposing cries of gambling: joy and despair.
I shook my head in wonder at Titus’s industry. ‘It looks like a circus.’
The long building had once been a storeroom, but now stacks of supplies had been removed to make room for games of dice, casks of ale and wine, and a wrestling ring surrounded by benches. The ring was currently empty but the seats full, and I expected some spectacle was soon to begin. Until then, Roman legionary and Syrian archer busied themselves with drink and a dozen whores.
‘There must be a century in here?’ I asked Titus.
‘I tell the lads on the door not to let in more than sixty, but they probably take a few coins and forget how to count.’ He shrugged. ‘They’re infantry, after all.’
‘Is it like this every night?’
‘Not really. Got busier since Caedicius ordered half-rations. Nothing makes a man gamble like a bit of hunger.’ Then Titus turned to a knot of soldiers, pointing at an inebriated man in their midst. ‘Oi. You lot. He’s gone or you all are.’
The men moved quickly to obey him and eject their drunken friend as, from the corner of my vision, I felt the approach of someone whose shoulders were twice the thickness of my own.
‘Hello, boys.’
‘Metella,’ I replied.
‘Come for the wrestling?’
‘I don’t know.’ I looked at Titus. ‘Have I?’
The man grinned. ‘He’s come to see that he won’t be going hungry.’
‘A friend of Titus is a friend of mine.’ She smiled too, through broken teeth, catching Titus’s meaning before turning back to him. ‘You want to get started?’
‘This is your show, darling. I’m just the humble quartermaster.’
‘All right then.’
She walked away to the centre of the wrestling ring that was drawn out on the storeroom floor. The eyes of the drinking soldiers caught the movement, and there was a noticeable drop in volume as they watched her take centre stage.
‘Shut up then, you tarts,’ Metella ordered the few soldiers who had yet to quieten down. ‘Same rules as last night. You register over there with Plancus. Price of entry is a day’s rations. You’ll get matched up against someone your own size, and winner takes the scoff. You want to bet for coin, it goes through Plancus and me, or my fist goes through your fucking head, understood? You can bet in your groups, but house takes a twenty cut. Don’t like it? Fuck off. We’ve got plenty more who want to come in.’
There were no dissenting voices. The soldiers on the benches had come to win food or make money. So had the whores whose arms were draped about the men’s necks.
‘Right,’ the burly woman concluded. ‘Plancus? First two names.’
An old soldier stepped forward as Metella moved away into the crowd. He walked with a severe limp, his hip dropping low with each step.
‘Met him a couple of years ago,’ Titus confided in me. ‘Solid bloke. Worked with us in Minden.’
I thought back to Titus’s black-market trading in the army’s summer camp – how his deal with the Seventeenth Legion’s quartermaster had led to Roman blades in German hands. Titus’s twisted sense of honour had compelled him to kill that man for his deceit, and so I could only imagine that he had found Plancus to be innocent of any part in it.
That grey-haired veteran now called out a pair of names belonging to men of the Nineteenth Legion. Plancus’s voice was as tired as his legs: the man must have been close to sixty, pushing two terms of enlistment within the legions.
‘What do you get out of this?’ I asked Titus as two muscular soldiers entered the ring. Both carried themselves with confidence, flexing shoulders as they eyed their opponent.
‘Besides entertainment?’ he grunted. ‘Half of the door,’ meaning the money that was collected for entry. ‘And half of what the house takes on bets.’
I didn’t need to be a mathematician to see that it would be a profitable night for him. ‘That’s a big cut. How did you get them to agree to that?’
The big man smiled. ‘Metella’s an old friend. And she might be built like a war galley, Felix, but this is a man’s world.’
I had little to say to that. There was no doubt in my mind that women played the tune of men’s hearts and heads, but in the world’s eyes only a man could stand to the fore in business or power. Roman society was built on subjugation, and that extended to gender as much as social class or nation of birth.
‘Coin on the dark-haired lad?’ Titus then offered me.
‘Why not? It’s your money, after all.’
We lapsed into silence and watched as the two soldiers went at it, both content to dispense with caution and to charge at their opponent, looking for the quick opening and win. Wrestling was a mandatory part of training in the legions, courage and strength being highly valued virtues, and both fighters were looking for victory through those means, rather than tactics.
‘My bloke’s got this,’ Titus grunted, assured. ‘Look how the other lad keeps trying to duck out from under his grip. He’s goin’ to end up on his face.’
The wrestlers stood locked in a vice-like grip, the veins of their biceps like pipes as they clutched at each other’s necks and shoulders, each fighting for the leverage that would allow them to flip their opponent on to the floor. Sure enough, my man looked as though his neck was buckling.
‘Loser’s going to be a lot more hungry than if he just stayed on half-rations,’ I noted.
‘That’s what makes it interesting.’ Titus was clearly proud of his ability to turn a profit from disaster. ‘They’ll double down then, and be back for the next one. They’ll hold grudges. They’ll get desperate. We’re under siege, Felix. People aren’t goin’ anywhere, and so for distraction they’ll pay anything. With or without those pay chests, I’m going home rich.’
‘To find your son?’ I asked, trying to keep my tone casual. Titus had shared a secret with me as the army had died: that his boy, thought lost with the navy, had surfaced alive, but in trouble. I had never referred to it since.
Titus said nothing. If it was possible to make silence violent, then he did so. His face grew taut. I saw the warning signs of his anger, and let my curiosity die.
‘You were right,’ I said instead as the dark-haired soldier finally tripped his opponent, sending him sprawling on to his front and giving up his back so that he was quickly pinned to the floor and defeated.
Titus simply grunted as cheers came from the bet’s winners, and jeers from the angry losers.
Plancus hobbled back to the fore as the defeated wrestler stormed away in disgust. ‘Next one’s a treat!’ the veteran announced. ‘Come up Macro, Nineteenth Legion, and… Fuckin’ ’ell. I’m not gonna try and read this name. Something foreign. Who’s the Syrian?’
A lithe archer raised his hand and stepped forwards, doubtless taking his cue from the look of puzzlement on Plancus’s lined face. The archer was tall for an Easterner, and measured up well against the smirking Roman who now rubbed chalk into his hands and spat on to the boards for luck.